"If You Love That Lady Don't Marry Her": the Courtship Letters of Sally McDowell and John Miller, 1854-1856.

Edited by Thomas E. Buckley, S.J. (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, c. 2000. Pp. [xlvi], 896. $29.95, ISBN 0-8262-1278-6.)

Sally McDowell was a rare woman, indeed. Not only did she own and manage a large Virginia plantation, she was very much an anomaly in antebellum southern society. McDowell was a divorc6e. By the time John Miller asked her to marry him in 1854, McDowell had been divorced from Francis Thomas, the former governor of Maryland, for eight years. Though she had suffered horrendous emotional abuse from Thomas and received much sympathy as the victim, proper society--and McDowell herself--never let her forget that she had violated the traditional rules for women. Believing a second marriage would ruin Miller's reputation as well as her own, McDowell initially rejected his proposal. Miller, a widowed Presbyterian minister from Philadelphia, had fallen deeply in love with McDowell and refused to give up. For more than two years, he courted her mainly through letters, slowly breaking down her objections.

Between 1854 and 1856 Miller and McDowell wrote each other every few days. Their extensive courtship letters make up this collection. Not surprisingly, these are not the typical letters of a young courting couple in the first bloom of love. Rather, they are the intimate and forthcoming letters of adults in their mid-thirties with much experience behind them. Yet the letters are also often playful and passionate. The correspondence centers around the dilemma McDowell's divorce posed for the couple. Even though legally free to remarry, McDowell firmly believed that her damaged status prevented her from accepting Miller's proposal. "No woman in my circumstances, however free she may be acknowledged to be, may use her liberty without, to a greater or less extent, losing caste in society:--and my pride & delicacy, no less than my generosity recoils from any step that could implicate my own standing, or that of another" (pp. 14-15). Friends and family constantly reminded each of them of the religious and social stigma attached to a divorc6e and advised against the marriage. In letter after letter, McDowell related her fears that Miller would lose his pulpit and that the children from his first marriage would suffer from her denigrated position. The two had much to overcome. Over the long months Miller patiently explained again and again the legal, religious, and social justifications that permitted them to marry. He persevered and finally succeeded. They married in November 1856.

While the voluminous correspondence revolves around their troubles over whether and when to wed, the letters illustrate much about gender roles andexpectations in antebellum America. McDowell's letters demonstrate both her skill at surviving as a woman on her own and her sufferings for failing to live up to planter society's expectations for white ladies. The correspondence also reveals the impact of evangelicalism among the elite, as Miller and McDowell blended their love for each other and attempts to solve their own problems with their love of God and a reliance on His will for the future. Their self-revelations and reflections illuminate the mental and emotional world of nineteenth-century Americans.

In this edited collection, these letters are a rich but frustrating source. They are simply too much of a good thing. I generally prefer comprehensive to selective editions, but in this case, the volume is overwhelming. The many hundreds of letters simply do not sustain a reader's interest. With almost nine hundred pages of correspondence to wade through, historians will have a tricky time turning the letters into a useful source. Thankfully, the detailed index can point scholars in some of the right directions. In a condensed form, this collection would have proven more valuable to historians of gender and southern society.

CHARLENE BOYER LEWIS
Widener University